Looking from Canada to the United States, across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) and the Grit health "tax/premium"

It is disappointing that our Supreme court declined to hear the TTC's appeal questioning its obligation to pay the 'health tax' for its employees. We know Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty, since 2004, always insisted that this forced payment was a premium, not a tax. However, ourlocal paper, the St. Catharines Standard, on Feb. 16, 2007, quoted McGuinty saying: "I don't expect to get a free ride from my opponents. I raised the health tax. I didn't do it to raise my popularity. I did that because I needed more money for healthcare." Is McGuinty lying now, in 2007, (about the premium being a tax, as he clearly now calls it), or was he lying then, in 2004, when he was calling what was obviously a tax, a premium?? His duplicity and wordplay just cost the TTC - and all taxpayers - millions of dollars. That's no free ride.